[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

“Scimitars of steel” as onomatopoeia

Of course the repetition of the 't' sound is also reminiscent of the hiss and thud of a scimitar in use, but I preferred the tense threat of the sound of sharpening to the mindless brutality of the melee.

Fascinating observation with regard to alliteration in the prof’s scholarly work, too – I’ll have to keep an eye out for that

The line I had in mind is from The Monsters and the Critics, which I thought strangely poetic for an academic piece. I'll look up and post the exact quotation when I get home.

Nice point about Orcish tribalism as a parallel for European conceptions of the Middle-East. I hadn't thought of that one, but now that you come to mention it, 'scimitar' is a very alien-sounding word, whereas 'sword' and even 'cutlass' are too familiar to convey the sinister atmosphere invoked by its hissing sibilant and hard stop.

On the subject of enemies, though, I don't think that Tolkien was referring to Arabs when he spoke of them coming from the east: Arabic invaders got as far north as Poitiers, but Charles Martel beat them back into Spain and they certainly never came near the Northern lands of Britain and Scandinavia. My money would be on Tolkien's reference being more to Franks, Huns, Goths, Mongols and the like, who moved west through Europe. Being an Englishman it's even more likely that images of longships were on his mind: the first Viking raid on England struck the monastary at Lindisfarne, off the North-East coast, and the English came to know the Vikings as 'the scourge of God'.